Quantitative Approaches to Behavior

This symposium will take place in Room 9204/5 at the Graduate Center.

The first thing that fascinates us about life is the macroscopic behavior of organisms. The effort to characterize this behavior quantitatively goes back to the 1800s, in studies of the relationship between physical signals and human perception of these signals, a subject which came to be called “psychophysics.” Progress in this approach depends on simplifying behavior, often reducing it to a choice among a handful of alternatives. In contrast, the etholoigsts developed a rich, qualitative description of more complex behaviors in their natural context. The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in quantitive approaches to these real world behaviors, taming their complexity through more powerful measurements and analyses. This symposium will explore our progress toward a physics of behavior, with examples drawn from many different systems.











When: Fri., Sep. 15, 2017 at 9:30 am - 6:00 pm
Where: Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave.
212-817-7000
Price: Free
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This symposium will take place in Room 9204/5 at the Graduate Center.

The first thing that fascinates us about life is the macroscopic behavior of organisms. The effort to characterize this behavior quantitatively goes back to the 1800s, in studies of the relationship between physical signals and human perception of these signals, a subject which came to be called “psychophysics.” Progress in this approach depends on simplifying behavior, often reducing it to a choice among a handful of alternatives. In contrast, the etholoigsts developed a rich, qualitative description of more complex behaviors in their natural context. The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in quantitive approaches to these real world behaviors, taming their complexity through more powerful measurements and analyses. This symposium will explore our progress toward a physics of behavior, with examples drawn from many different systems.

Buy tickets/get more info now